Fire Exit  

My sister told me to keep writing, and I do my best to listen to her. Here goes.

I skipped out on work Sunday and went to Madison to see the closing performance of Fire Exit, a play written by and featuring Greg Harris, one of my closest and most creatively inspiring friends. The day could not have been more perfect.

I love Madison. The entire place often feels pregnant with questions and ideas. You can almost sense the activity of minds being shaped, discussions entertained. I have not been anywhere else where you can find a hundred or more people outside enjoying the sun and the lake with a book on their lap ( It was a beautiful day and the Terrace was packed). Madison is also where I have met the greatest friends I have ever known. Almost all of amazing people that fill my life and make it comprehensible are from my time there.

But as the bus pulled into town, I started to feel the familiar pangs of regret that accompany my visits. Madison is also the setting of the failure, depression, and waste that characterize much of my twenties. When I think about Madison, I think of opportunities forsaken and possibilities ignored.

My pastor once said life for me is like floating down a river on an innertube. While most get along fine easing our way downstream, the realization that I'm moving makes me question where I'm headed. I dig my heels in and resolve not to move another inch until I get things figured out, until I map a route and destination I find acceptable. The paralysis of such a task can be overwhelming. You spend all you time craning your neck around the corner and asking "What then?" You are never able to be present and all the people, experiences, and moments, all that time, float past.

I walked up State St. to the capitol, over to the Weary Traveler, and sat down to some food, a little bourbon, and great music. I started making a list of the things I did and didn't do while in school. While monumentally depressing, the one thing I did do that stuck out was I learned how to think. I didn't spend to much time at class or writing papers on time or being involved, but I spent hours talking and listening to some incredibly elegant thinkers. They taught me rigor, analysis, and synthesis, as well as respect, patience, and generosity. I learned how to learn. So why was I so confused?

I killed some time by walking to Lake Monona and stared at the clouds for awhile. I had just seen James Benning's 10 Skies the night before and tried to hold my vision on one small segment of sky and observe all the changes that can happen in ten minutes (you'd be amazed). I realized that if Madison taught me to think, Milwaukee has taught me to see (I'm pretty good. I have 5th or 6th grade vision, but hope to work my way to pre-schooler before all's said and done). Not seeing well is problematic because all the thinking in the world can't help you if your information is flawed. As much as I was learning and as well as I thought, I simply didn't know. I didn't know. All that time spent not knowing. All that time wasted.

The play started and it was wonderful. Based on the mythology surrounding the burned down Hotel Washington, a group of friends revisit the abandoned wreckage and their former selves (each character is double cast with an older and younger actor after Sondheim's Follies). Like a eulogy to his twenties, Greg celebrated and mourned the carefree pleasures and blinded eyes of unsuspecting youth. He challenged those moving on to neither flee from nor be imprisoned by their regret and to understand growing up is not removing the possibility of mistake - that is failure - but accepting that the same mistakes will be made over again forever - that is living.

In laying his past to rest, Greg helped me bury mine as well. The emotion of this and the joy of seeing someone you care about keep working, keep failing, making the same mistakes and not giving up, and producing such amazing work as a result, catapulted my feet out of any mud they might be dragging in. I spent the rest of the evening enjoying the family of friends created through the production, marveling at what I saw. Present.

So I think the past is past. I learned the question to ask isn't "Why didn't I?" or " What's next?", but "What's now?". I've learned to look and how to enjoy what I find. I've learned there are no maps, only the occasional and momentary guide. And above all, I've learned to trust the Providence of the current. I think the temptation at turning thirty is to re-live your twenties. Thanks to a few long walks and a friend who writes well, I no longer fear that. I still want to live like I'm twenty - exploring, learning, creating, and you might find that just as pathetic. That's fine, I'm just going to paddle around for a while.



P.S.- I noticed that my profile I listed occupation as a Filmmaking Hobbist rather than Hobbyist. If anyone was under the impression that I make films advocating absolute monarchy as the means of guaranteeing a stable civil society, I apologize.